Have a Nice Guilt Trip by Lisa Scottoline, Francesca Serritella Read Free Book Online

understand I don’t know anything about love, marriage, or even divorce.
    The reasons?
    Tom and Katie.
    I’m a Tom Cruise fan, and so is Daughter Francesca. As you may remember from our previous book, we have Tom Cruise Appreciation Week, especially during power outages, when we watch his movies on laptops. And I remember very well when Tom fell in love with Katie Holmes and jumped on Oprah’s couch.
    You know what I thought?
    Yay!
    Good for him!
    He’s happy and in love!
    Yes, I am the only person in America who did NOT think it was weird that he got so excited he jumped on the couch. Number one, I’m Italian, and we get excited easily. If somebody brings us a plate of spaghetti, it’s all we can do not to jump on the couch.
    We like it. Couches, spaghetti, everything. We’re excitable.
    But even so, I still don’t think it’s crazy he jumped on the couch for love. I myself, your favorite celibate, have felt like jumping on couches for love.
    Why not?
    Couches have cushions for a reason.
    And the guy was happy.
    An entire nation called him weird, but secretly, I was jealous. I hoped that someday, somebody would jump on a couch for me and be called weird by an entire nation.
    So I admit, I was out of the mainstream on that one, which happens sometimes, and we all live. But the very next time I was completely out of the mainstream was when Tom and Katie announced they were separating, and nobody was surprised.
    Except me.
    I was astounded.
    I heard it on TV and I thought something was wrong with the set. I couldn’t believe it. They were so cute together and the kid is adorable, and so are the other kids, and they seemed like such a happy family.
    Suffice it to say, I didn’t see it coming. I don’t know why they got divorced, and that isn’t my point herein. Rumor has it the reason is Scientology, but I don’t know anything about Scientology except that it’s kind of a dumb word. I have no view of Scientology and I don’t poke fun at other people’s religions, because believers will kill me in its name.
    I was still working through the fact of Tom and Katie’s separation when they announced they were divorced.
    WHAT?
    Now I’m really confused.
    Because I grant that I know nothing about love or marriage, but about divorce I know everything, especially that it takes FOREVER and costs A BILLION DOLLARS.
    Tom and Katie went through separation to divorce in eleven days.
    That’s not possible. They divided a couple of kids, massive amounts of money, several houses, plenty of cars, and more than one couch.
    In eleven days!
    In eleven days, I can’t pick a paint color.
    If you ask me, this is a disaster. It contravenes all we know and hold dear about divorce, namely that it’s absurdly expensive and insanely painful. If people can go from married to divorced in eleven days, the problem is obvious.
    It’s going to put a lot of divorce lawyers out of business.
    They’re going to be out roaming the streets, with time on their hands.
    Can you imagine lawyers walking around, with nothing to do?
    It can only end badly, my friends.
    So now I fear for our nation.
    But not Tom.
    He will be okay.
    In fact, he will come and save the world.
    I know, I saw it in the movies.

 
    You Say Tomato
    By Lisa
    Did you hear about this?
    I read in the newspaper that somebody noticed that red tomatoes sell better than greenish ones, so food engineers started changing the genetic makeup of tomatoes to make them redder, except that it also took out the taste.
    I learned so much from this that I don’t know where to begin.
    Number one, food has engineers?
    I thought trains had engineers, and food had cooks.
    I just went from choo-choo to chew-chew.
    In fact, I thought you had to have an engine to have an engineer, but no.
    If you ask me, this opens new job opportunities for engineers. For example, I see a lot of trees that could use a good engineer. They aren’t green enough, especially in fall, when they turn a lot of crazy colors